The New York Times' David Rohde, who spent seven months as a hostage to a Taliban warlord in Afghanistan, has just returned to the paper's newsroom.

According to Times Twitterers Jennifer 8. Lee and Jodi Kantor, Rohde, his wife Kristin Mulvihill, and his Afghan fixer Tahir Ludin entered the newsroom minutes ago to what Kantor calls a "looooong loud ovation." The assembled Times staffers were in tears.

Rohde was kidnapped near Kabul in November along with Ludin and their driver. Though news of the kidnapping was reported by local news agencies at the time, and freely available on the internet, the Times successfully leaned on more than 40 news outlets (including this one) not to report on his situation. According to an account Ludin gave to the Times, he and Rohde escaped their captors in the tribal areas of Pakistan by climbing over a wall and walking to a Pakistani army base.

Rohde has remained silent about his ordeal thus far, declining to comment even to his own paper. When we inquired about Rohde's situation several months ago, while the blackout was still in place, the Times insisted to us that Rohde's captors had told the paper that his life would be further endangered if news of the kidnapping spread. Since his release, Times executive editor Bill Keller has quoted Rohde saying that his captors were intensely interested in Rohde's ransom value, which would have gone up if public awareness of his case increased. The Times has declined to explain the apparent contradiction.